[131] — See Jardine’s “Criminal Trials;” vol ii., p. 166.
[132] — See Foley’s “Records,” vol. i., p. 173, citing “Gunpowder Plot Book,” No. 177. Eudæmon-Joannes, in his “Apologia” for Henry Garnet, gives reasons why Father Hart, S.J., may have thus acted. Dr. Abbott, in his “Antilogia,” in reply to Eudæmon-Joannes, answers Joannes at great length.
[133] — Vol. ii., p. 120. It may be here stated that by the Common Law of England a confessor was obliged to reveal the fact to the Government in the case of his receiving from a penitent the confession of the heinous crime of High Treason.
Garnet said that “the priest is bound to find all lawful means to hinder and discover it, but that the seal of the Confessional must be saved, salvo sigillo confessionis.” — See Foley’s “Records,” vol. iv., p. 162. — It seems to me that this statement of Garnet is of the utmost importance.
[134] — Afterwards the well-known Lord Coke, the famous Editor of Judge Littleton’s work on “Tenures.” — For a diverting account of Coke and his domestic infelicities see Lord Macaulay’s Essay on “Lord Bacon.”
[135] — Catesby, John Wright, Christopher Wright, and Thomas Percy were already dead; the two first were slain at Holbeach; Christopher Wright and Thomas Percy both were wounded unto death at the same place; but certainly Percy and possibly Christopher Wright actually breathed their last a day or two afterwards. Query — Where were the bodies of these four men interred? Were they first quartered as traitors according to law?
Tresham died in the Tower, but his body was quartered, and its members exposed at Northampton in the usual way.
[136] — Jardine’s “Criminal Trials,” vol. ii., p. 135. This of the learned Attorney-General reminds one of the late Lord Bowen’s witty saying: “Truth will out; even in an Affidavit!”
[137] — Father Henry Garnet, the chief of the Jesuits in England, said that he considered the authors of the Gunpowder Treason were not only deserving of the punishment that some of them had undergone, but even a more severe one, if possible. — See Foley’s “Records.”
[138] — Fonblanque, in his “Annals of the House of Percy,” in the chapter dealing with Thomas Percy, expresses the opinion that the Government’s behaviour was comparatively mild, regard being had to the atrocious nature of the designment against the King and Parliament. Such is candidly my own opinion, and this, although I remember that James’s Oath of Allegiance and very tyrannical anti-recusant legislation were the dire consequences of the Plot, which (me judice) — far more than the Marian burnings, the